lol, no thats not it... but you are right that 512mb of the 4gb total is running at a very reduced bandwidth...

looks like a dishonest move to cut costs by cutting corners, but that story is done already

i have a 970 but i dont even use 1080p so it doesnt really affect me, but im still pretty pissed about it... problem is nvidia is pretty much the only game in town, now that AMD is basically shutting everything down

I have a 970, and still haven't had many issues with games in 4K. Mind you, I'm not much of an FPS guy, but pretty much everything I've thrown at it works well.

I'm just amused by the commenter who thinks AMD has better drivers, though - Catalyst has been hysterically bad for years...

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 29, 2015, 21:53:Well, it's a racing game, the main thing is making the cars look good. Everything else is just a blur, so it's a waste to put a lot of effort in pushing the boundaries of graphical fidelity to the point you're straining performance.

DiRT games have often been used as benchmarks in GPU reviews, but it's kind of moot when you're comparing 150 fps with this card to 180 in that one, etc.

That being said, it is that seemingly monomaniacal focus on detail that makes AAA racing games quite often into GPU stress tests - and the fact that more often than not racing games are designed to target a framerate of 30FPS rather than 60 gives them some more headroom in terms of their geometry and shader budgets.

{PH}88fingers wrote on Jun 24, 2015, 19:55:how is it looking at 1440p? I was looking into getting a Fury but now it seems like going the 980Ti route is the better option. I game at 1440p and plan to for the next 1-2 years before jumping to 4k once the gpu's can actually handle it nicely. 2016 at the earliest

GeForce GTX 980 Ti is 5% to 33% faster than Fury X at 1440p across various games. According to This

And I plan to upgrade in 1-2 years as well, to future proof my rig for VR... assuming I am compatible with that tech and don't get sick instantly ;p

Btw, all cards are miles away from the 95 fps limit for VR....

I read that the drivers are still not optimized enough and that after some time the Fury X could actually get faster than the GTX 980 Ti. Also the card runs quieter/cooler because it's fully watercooled, and therefore other components in your case will be cooler as well since all the hot air is exhausted out, so maybe better to overclock the CPU and RAM as a result.

1) If you trust AMD to make decent video drivers at some point in the future you have more faith than I.

2) Water cooling also tends to result in higher power consumption - which would likely rule out the Fury X for all but those with particularly beefy power supplies.

Honestly, I have no problem with them getting started right now, but I do have an issue with the lowest tier being £50 - the last time I got in about two tiers off the bottom and only paid £35, and I was playing the game off and on for over a year before it was released. The jump in prices seem to be rather disconcerting this time around, especially since it's basically no different than a pre-order and semi-closed beta unless you're willing to fork over at least £100 - and that's a staggering amount. That'll generally get you a pretty good way up the ladder on a Kickstarted game's list of tiers...

InBlack wrote on Jun 23, 2015, 04:15:Yeah, but how does it handle turns?

Apparently pulls over 2 g's of lateral acceleration on a skid pad, about double what a Corvette does and about half again more than a Nissan GT-R. To get a vehicle that corners better you'd need to get behind the wheel of a LeMans LMP1 prototype or an F1 car.

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 22, 2015, 13:52:It's easy to pull out of though - quit selling things below equilibrium and take the hit on # of units sold. They'd end up with fans who would pay full price. Then up-market those fans with cool merch and extras. I suspect that is more lucrative than selling to cheap people. After the buzz is gone, sell what's left cheap and immediately launch a new game.

So, basically, go back to the old model.

Basically what I've been saying for years - model pricing strategies based on a price discrimination strategy, using willingness to wait as an inverse proxy for willingness to pay. (Less willing to wait == more willing to pay.) If anything, I'd argue that games at launch might be (*dons flameproof suit*) too cheap - fans of a new Blizzard game or a new CoD game would likely pay $100 for them if they have to (and, with special editions, some do, with those editions usually constrained more by supply than demand). Not every game can sustain a top-tier price tag, but those that can are leaving money on the table with every copy they sell at launch. You can get money from the rest of the demand curve later, it's harder to get them to keep paying (see DLC uptake rates for anything other than multiplayer shooters).

ldonyo wrote on Jun 22, 2015, 10:35:Perhaps sales and bundles aren't the real problem. Perhaps the real problem is that some people in the video game industry believe they're entitled to $50+ for a copy of their new game, no matter how long it has been out or what platform(s) it is on. Add to that the cost of the inevitable DLC and/or expansion packs and that game's cost surges well past $100 before it's all said and done. Sorry, but without bundles, discounts, sales and GotY editions, I, and many others like me, would buy far fewer games.

Exactly! the problem is also the steady creep up of prices. Remember when you could get a new game for $40 and no additional DLC? Yeah its the greed of publishers/ devs that have gotten us to this point not sales.

The flip side of things, mind you, is that games in the SNES era were routinely $50-60 (adjusted for inflation, closer to $90 - even those $40 games of 15-20 years ago would be about $60 today), and, while bereft of DLC, were often able to be beaten in a couple hours or less. A full-scale game of that variety, even if it had modern production values, would likely be a $15-20 release on XBLA or PSN today.

Cutter wrote on Jun 22, 2015, 11:34:Wow is that girl ever greedy. Would you go and buy a car without a test drive? A house with inspecting it? This whole model of 'work once get paid forever' is so broken.

She's simply getting the best deal she can for her work. She's proven lots of people will pay non-trivial sums of money for her music, so she's in an almost uniquely privileged position in being able to dictate price terms on her music.

On the whole, however, music, like most other forms of media, is a form of monopolistic competition. You're the only one who has rights over what you do, but there's ten million other sources out there who do pretty much the same thing you do. Unless you're at the top of the heap, you have to be creative in how you make your art into your career.

(Mind you, her pressure play ends up being good for anyone who has their music on Apple Music, but the fact remains that most anyone other than the big boys is likely to get not much more than beer money from the service. That being said, the artist who can figure out how to use these streaming services as a marketing platform has the opportunity to become fabulously wealthy, I just don't know how that would work quite yet.)

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 20, 2015, 14:07:If AMD splits can we just call their graphics arm ATI again?

ATI has about a third of the market for graphics cards as far as PCs go. They can probably make it. I don't know about AMD CPUs though. Maybe they want to shed that division so that it's attractive for some big buyer (who isn't Intel) to add to a patent portfolio. I could see that happening.

My guess is they're wanting to sell the CPU business to Nvidia, but they can't sell the company as a whole for obvious antitrust reasons.

NKD wrote on May 15, 2015, 14:03:While younger employees may not have a monopoly on those things, they sure do have most of them, and accept a lower salary offer as well. It's hard to criticize employers for preferring younger employees who have everything to prove and haven't become complacent or cynical.

And lower medical costs. It is what it is, its the system we love. Good news... everyone (general) will be old. So we'll all have our day.

Get old, use your experience, become a consultant and make more with less time.

Back to medical costs, I'd like to see gov't health, take it away from companies, it's a large burden for them and they do make decisions based on that. And in a lot of cases it's going up fast for less service.

Only reason we have employer-based health care is because the government gave employers special tax treatment to money they spend on health care. As a result, they overspend on that benefit, and spend poorly on it to boot (after all, they just do a generalized approach - they don't know, or care, what you want specifically out of health care).

(My employer gave me an annual benefits statement that said they spent more on my health, life, and disability insurance coverages than they spent on my salary last year. Seriously, couldn't I just get that in cash?)

Beamer wrote on May 9, 2015, 12:53:Seattle was definitely getting more expensive, and so many of the new buildings going up in Belltown were crap, but it's got a really, really long way to go before it's even remotely close to NYC.

Doesn't NYC have laws that have to have so many affordable houses? Not the typical, for the really poor. But for middle class. I thought they had something so middle class can live in the city and still get the basic jobs done.

There are rent-controlled apartments, but good luck finding one that's available. They simply never hit the market in any formal sense, as anyone who gets them will do their best to hang onto them for as long as possible for obvious reasons (including subleasing them if they're out of the area, even if that's often in violation of the terms of said properties).

killer_roach wrote on May 9, 2015, 10:48:Ultimately, both the people AND the businesses matter. Without the former, the city withers - without the latter it either hollows out or becomes an irrational plaything for those too wealthy to have concerns with money.

True. Seattle is a meca to now, I'm sure prices were already high, they are going higher, it's going to be an LA/NY/Chi/SF if it isn't already.

I've been doing some research out there (actually have been looking into jobs with Amazon's corporate headquarters), and from what I've seen of apartments there they're probably pretty close to Chicago territory for cost, although not to the level of NYC, DC, or SF. (LA is just too all over the place to make a good determination on, although the places people want to live tend to cost pretty similarly to DC.)

650sq ft studio for $2300/mo isn't enough for you?

I was still able to find two bedroom apartments within walking distance of Amazon's headquarters that were in the $1700-1800 a month range. It's steep, but not that crazy considering what the income level associated with the employers in the area is.